Overcoming Group Project Struggles

In my last 8 semesters at Purdue, I have had my fair share of group projects, especially in my last 4 semesters as a Liberal Arts student studying Public Relations. Generally, group projects, for me, tend to be fairly short-term and mainly take place during scheduled class time. However, I have recently encountered two semester-long group projects that have presented issues I had never experienced before.

As an extroverted person and someone who typically takes the leadership role in projects or organizations, I sometimes struggle with out to deal with group members who do not present high quality work. This was my experience with a recent semester-long project; I did not know how to approach a group member who was not presenting work at the same level as other group members.

As I wondered what to do about the situation, I considered the needs of my group and the importance of respecting all group members. I remembered something that one of my mentors had once suggested to me about group work. She suggested that I take into consideration the strengths of each member, no matter what the strength. I decided to give this a shot and it ended up resulting in a great change of direction for my group. All group members felt at ease when we identified each of our strengths to create different assignments within the project and felt we now had a way to each equally contribute to the project.

It is important to keep in mind in the classroom, in an internship, or in a co-rep position the value of asking group members and partners what they believe their own strengths are. I have learned that this is an excellent way of delegating. Time after time, professors stress to us the importance of delegation, but sometimes that is hard to accept when you prefer to take the lead. However, learning to delegate turns out to make for an excellent leader, and is a piece of advice I would pass along to anyone.